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D’yan Forest’s career as a comedian got started when most people wind down. Twenty-five years ago, Forest was a working musician in her late sixties struggling to find gigs in the aftermath of 9/11. “I saw that everyone was depressed, and I couldn’t work,” she said in an interview on WLIW this week.
On a whim, she took an open spot on open mic night at Caroline’s on Broadway. “What did I know? I told a story about growing up,” she said, recalling her upbringing in a conservative Massachusetts household. “I started doing comedy to raise people’s hopes and have fun.”
It worked. Now, at 92, Forest has performed around the world, written several celebrated one-woman shows, and holds the Guiness Book of World Records title as the oldest working comedian. (She was originally designated as the oldest working female comedian at the age of 90, but as Guiness has no male equivalent in its records, she’s now recognized as the oldest working comic, period.)
Her act blends autobiographical storytelling with a ukulele performance that draws on her earlier career. The Guiness record plays a role, too. “It has made a huge difference because people think I’m somebody,” Forest told me over the phone this week. “All I did was get old and stay alive.”
Forest grew up in the 1930s in a Jewish household that immigrated to the United States before WWII. Much of her extended family died in Riga, the capital of Latvia, during the Holocaust. “My grandfather told me I had a cousin in Riga that I’d meet after the war,” she said. “Well, the war happened and 90 percent of people from Riga died. I never met her.” When Forest found a second career in comedy, she traveled to the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem and looked up the missing relative. “She was killed in 1941,” Forest said. “She was one week younger than me.”
That realization further deepened her sense of purpose. Forest was married and divorced in her young adulthood, escaping the life of a housewife to work as a musician and cabaret singer in Paris before resettling in New York. Her act draws on this eclectic history. “People think comedians are just about laughs, but no, we have a very deep side, too,” she said. “If I can make the audience laugh and be with me, that’s all I’m looking for. If I can help some people realize they can do anything, I’ve done something for the world.”
Forest grew up watching comic actors like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, not the traditional standup comics one expected to find at clubs today. However, by the time she got into comedy, that vaudevillian tradition was long gone. She was more inspired by Joan Rivers. The two women met at a comedy club during the last decade of Rivers’ life. “They introduced me to her and she said, “Oh, I’ve heard of you, you’re the filthy ukulele player,’” Forest said. “I said, ‘No, Joan, I’m just risque.’ She was so friendly and broke so many barriers. I thought that if she could do it, I could do it.”
Forest said she has mixed feelings about many of today’s more popular comics holding sway over broader sociopolitical issues. “My show is about me, myself, and what goes on with people who are older like me,” she said. “I just stick to that. You hear enough about politics on the radio.”
On Tuesday, Forest will present a new routine on The Three Amigos, the 40-year-old comedy starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short. The chemistry between that fabled trio, and various sweet-natured musical interludes, distinguish the movie from many of the more raucous comedies made today. “You have to change your brain a bit to watch it today,” she said. “It’s an American western semi-musical comedy of errors. I look at comedy today and I’m like, ‘What’s this all about?’ You’ve got to connect with people. It just has to be funny. I make fun of myself. I say a few dirty words and all that, but I’m not vulgar.”
She feels constantly underestimated when she goes to clubs today. “People think, ‘What’s this old grandmother doing here?’” she said. “I just keep my mouth shut until I go up and do it.” Over the years, Forest has brought her act around the country as well as Europe — including her beloved France, where she performs her act in French. “If my parents could see me now, they wouldn’t understand what I’m saying,” Forest said. She chuckled. “In French or in English.”
D’yan Forest introduces The Three Amigos at the Southampton Playhouse on Tuesday, August 18 at 7pm. Tickets are available here.
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